A European court on Thursday threw out a restitution claim by Germans expelled at the end of World War II from what is now Poland — a decision welcomed by the leaders of both countries.

From the same traitor government that recognized the Oder-Neisse Line as Germany's eastern border, no surprise there.

In these Orwellian times I fear I shall live to see the Expulsion receive the same treatment as the bombing of Dresden. Millions will become thousands, 'relocated' in a humane manner, their persons and property regarded as inviolate by the All-lies.

1. All victims of war and tyranny deserve respect and compassion. Any attempt to downplay or even conceal crimes offends not only the ethos of scholarship, it insults the victims and their memory.

2. The expulsion of the Germans is a legitimate subject for scholarly research. It is one of the most portentous events in modern history, for it extinguished a community of cooperation between Slavs and Germans which had grown and flourished over several centuries. It therefore cannot simply be excluded from the common European experience. Unfortunately there still exists a certain taboo concerning this subject matter, which may not restrict research as such, but certainly restrains public discussion. It is, after all, a question of historical completeness.

3. Historians are bound by a scholarly and moral obligation to research and present historical events, to determine the facts and organize them into the greater historical context. It is unworthy of a free society and the spirit of free inquiry when historians who tackle controversial or unwelcome topics, no matter how serious and disciplined their work may be, are accused of concocting nothing more than "a balancing of accounts" or "apologies" for crimes.

4. The expulsions cannot be regarded as a question of crime and punishment. The task of punishing those responsible for the war and war crimes was delegated to the Nuremberg Tribunal, which introduced a new principle of international law, that of personal liability for the actions of politicians and soldiers. Nevertheless, 15 million Germans were expelled, or forced to flee, without any question as to their individual guilt or innocence. Any punishment which does not take personal responsibility or extenuating circumstances into account is juridically and morally indefensible.

5. Similarly, a principle of collective guilt cannot be applied to the expulsions, just as there can be no collective guilt for war. But there is surely a collective morality which commits us all to humane conduct toward one another. In other words, guilt can only be understood as belonging to the individual, whereas morality binds us all.

6. There can be no such thing as humane forced resettlement, a contradiction in terms, for the coerced loss of one's homeland can never be humane.

7. The tragic experience of the German expellees could have served as a warning to spare other nations the traumata of expulsion from their homelands, heritage, and pride. Alas, for decades the facts of the expulsion of the Germans were systematically ignored by the media and even by professional historians, whose function was and remains to do proper research, to chronicle events and to put them in perspective. No wonder that the ethnic cleansing of the 1990’s in the former Yugoslavia was presented by the media as unprecedented. The expulsion and spoliation of the Germans remains an important subject for study in the high schools and universities. We owe this recognition to the victims – as we owe the truth to ourselves.

Die Vertreibung---That's how it was for millions, 1945-50. Take note that
these columns of displaced are fleeing into the relative safety of the US-Zone.

Why wouldn't they be laughing? It was like winning the lottery! For centuries, Czechs and Germans mutually inhabited these areas peacefully until World War One and most families were bilingual. Germans had lived in modern day "Czech" territory well before Slavic tribes arrived around 500 AD. Until their expulsion in 1945, over 3 million Sudeten Germans formed the majority population in west, north and south Bohemia, as well as in parts of north and south Moravia. After World War Two, the Germanic villagers in towns which had a majority German population for many centuries in old Bohemia (part of the present day Czech Republic) were all rounded up and either murdered or exiled after World War Two. Their homes and family farms were brazenly stolen. The place names of German villages and cities in these areas were all changed, and their histories subsequently stolen, erased or rewritten. All German civilians were presumed collectively guilty and stripped of their citizenship and their property.

Many expelled German civilians were interned in concentration camps where they were murdered by poisoning, intentional starvation and unchecked disease. 2,061 such camps existed in Czechoslovakia. In the Mährisch-Ostrau camp around 350 people were tortured to death by early July 1945. Others were forced to walk hundreds of miles, or crammed into cattle cars and dumped, such as the cramped, thirsty transport of Sudeten Germans from Troppau in Czech Silesia that arrived in Berlin in August, 1945. After 18 hellish days of travel, only 1,350 out of 4,250 woman, children and old people were still alive.Few ever arrived at a safe location with even a purse intact because they were robbed every step of the way.

In some places, the German citizens were dragged from their beds and forced to assemble in the town squares where families were separated, the old men and boys taken away and shot and the women were indecently probed for hidden items of value such as wedding rings before they were forced from their homes by gunpoint. The Brünn Death March makes the French Revolution look like a picnic. It was fully legal to kill Germans thanks to the (still valid) Benes decree #115 of May 8, 1946 which declared all deeds against Germans, down to the rape and murder of children, were "justified acts of retribution" that could not be prosecuted.

Even small hamlets were cleansed of their German histories. For well over 700 years, German speaking people had inhabited Zuckmantel, the birthplace of Franz Schubert's mother Maria Vietz (1756- 1812) until the very last remnants of them were cruelly driven out at the end of World War Two between December and January of 1946. Their new Czech masters almost overnight, by gun point, issued the following directive: that the banished inhabitants must leave their houses "completely furnished; curtains, carpets, lamps, bedlinen... with beds to be freshly made for 2 persons per home. The luggage may not be packed in carpets and coats.......Certified luggage for a person : 30 kg and 10 kg hand baggage. All else is to be left in the home!" These citizens were not only robbed of their homes, they had to make the beds for their new masters! Needless to say, they were never repaid for the brazen theft of their homes and properties and the present German government thwarts all attempts to help them get the justice they deserve.